garden-operating-map.md

Where the garden's feedback can act

An analytical map of the native recipe, using its actual world-total source rates and physical extent. These are operating-point estimates, not observed relaxation times or conditions sufficient for rich behavior. The executable Julia study reads the recipe and shared cellular defaults; JSON records assumptions, source hashes and nine candidate contrasts.

Clock	Model time
Neural response	0.8
Nominal minimum travel over exchange radius	3
Bare diffusion over exchange radius, L²/D	5.4
Adaptation	8
Free desorption	8.33
Mark relaxation, frozen hidden activity	45.45–50
Catalyst decay	125
Initial raw concentration / mean input rate	128
Finite raw supply horizon	1500

These scales overlap enough to make delayed feedback plausible. The question is which paths have appreciable gain and remain accessible to a cell as it moves. Residence time can be shorter than catalyst memory; retained traces can outlive their authors. A long-lived trace is useful memory only if a later response depends on it. The matched interventions measure that dependence; the research shelf connects it to causal attribution and driven information-processing capacity.

Catalysis and remodeling need not share an operating point

Each raw source supplies one mass unit per time across volume64, hence mean concentration rate 1/64, not1. With initial raw concentration2 and catalytic rate6, matching that input requires estimated enzyme concentration0.002865 per species. At this estimate, the total enzyme lowers permeability only to0.897. Each binding capacity is0.01719 versus initial free-food concentration0.3. Efficient food production can therefore occur before strong transport remodeling. Actual local enzymes may accumulate above this estimate, and local raw depletion changes it; the calculation does not establish weak feedback in the recorded run.

Three analytically chosen contrasts, with all other recipe values held fixed:

Catalytic rate	Transport barrier	Permeability at supply match	Diffusion / adaptation
6	20	0.897	0.752
0.6	20	0.466	1.448
0.6	100	0.149	4.542

Slower catalysis demands more paid construction for the same release; a stronger barrier makes that construction affect transport sooner. Either can prevent establishment or trap resources. Those are hypotheses to explore in small matched worlds, alongside unaltered controls. They are not recommended production settings on the evidence so far.

The map explicitly distinguishes world size from spatial resolution: refining the grid alone changes none of these physical clocks. Domain size changes the long-wavelength modes, and source totals must scale with volume to preserve local input. Changing a timestep changes the discretization, not the intended physical timescale. The sixteen checks cover those distinctions and null-source/transport limits.

julia --project=. bin/interior.jl study garden_operating_map \
  experiments/native/constructed-garden-64.toml outputs/my-operating-map.json
julia --project=. test/garden_operating_map.jl

Use a fresh output path. Transport uses the characteristic convention L²/D, not a three-dimensional first-passage time. The nine candidate points vary catalysis and barrier independently; nonlinear uptake, evolving expression, finite funding and spatial heterogeneity remain for actual simulation to resolve.